Author: Glenn Jacob

While the United States has been locked down, carbon emissions have decreased by 5.5 percent. The skies have cleared over major metropolitan areas and the sunny days are simply gorgeous. However, sheltering Americans in their homes left the rest of the nation producing carbon emissions at an incredible 94.5 percent of the rate before the pandemic struck. How could this happen?

The answer is the fossil fuel industry. The utilities are still running at full tilt. Diesel trucks and trains are still crisscrossing the country at steady rates. Essential manufacturing and cattle management are continuing unabated.

We have been taken for idiots.

For decades, climate change advocates have worked at the grassroots level, encouraging individuals and households to become involved in the fight to save the planet from global warming. The most common method of raising volunteers is teaching them individual responsibility, of reducing their own carbon footprints. Our websites, toolkits, and workshops are full of strategies and advice for individual choices and household choices for green living. Most of material is good and worthy.

In fact, many of the best suggestions for individual greening are also promoted by the fossil fuel industry, particularly utilities. They offer promotions for digital thermostats and LED lightbulbs nearly every month. We should have been more suspicious.

The utilities have been emphasizing their customer’s individual responsibility for climate change while remaining silent about their own outsized culpability. “Don’t look at us,” they are saying, “look at what you are doing. You are guilty of not doing enough.” At a time when households are absolutely doing their part by staying home, the carbon emissions only dropped 5.5%.

The utilities are responsible for most of the rest of the carbon pollution, 60%, 70%, or 80%. The reality could not be starker. Utilities were, are, and will be the worst polluters until we stop them. At this time of pandemic, energy sector bailouts should be targeted at clean renewable energy sources. Natural gas and coal powerplants should be wound down as soon as possible.

Furthermore, the only path out of the pandemic-caused recession/depression is government spending. FDR’s New Deal was a spending plan focusing on infrastructure, of which the United States is already in great need. The new energy structure necessary for the 21st century needs to be built and it must be built for a green energy economy.

Individual responsibility is a still a great entry into the green activism. However, the ultimate goal is not individual actions, but government and industry actions. Let us not allow ourselves to be taken for malleable idiots again.

Can we save the planet from its current projection of 4.1 degrees centigrade by 2100? You bet. This interactive simulator lets you tinker with all the possible solutions that are available today. Experiment! (Look for the big blue button on the right for the SIMULATOR, which is often updated.)

The railroad industry has spent billions of dollars for climate denial propaganda. They represent another piece of the puzzle of who is funding fight against climate change legislation. Coal represents up to one-third of of their haulage. Read the article here.

A candidate for U.S. Senate in Colorado has posted an ad that offers an apocalyptic version of climate change. This is the first election cycle where climate change is thrust forward as a primary issue. Hopefully, this election strategy will spread to other campaigns. Four minutes long.

Are you giving carte blanche to your bank to not only to continue to pollute the world, but actually increase the rate of carbon pollution? Where does your congregation or your organization bank. Use your money wisely: Financial Investment in the Fossil Fuel Industry 2019 REPORT.

Love your tea? Don’t use a teabag. The teabag used today is a paper product infused with plastic to keep it from disintegrating. What could take away the joy of a cup of tea more than seven million bits of micro-plastic? Yum.

Leaked audio of a private meeting confirms that Coca-Cola Inc. has no interest in recycling plastic bottles because the best methods will cost the company money. None of us should be surprised, yet there are two immediate takeaways.

Free market forces are not going to save the environment.

Duplicity is the preferred policy of corporations, pretending to support environmental projects while sabotaging them wholesale behind the scenes. For another example, see Shell.

As for the religious response, the antithetical values on display are: